In some sense I do appreciate the sophistication of Bill Gates’ science communication here though as I suspect that far more Westerners are his audience and a much larger proportion of them are uninformed anti-vaxxers who might latch onto the idea of vaccine-derived polio cases as further evidence for their worldview of not vaccinating their own children and thereby increasing heath risk in the United States.​

The mission of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to ease suffering around the world may be somewhat at odds with the "America First" sentiments that propelled Donald Trump into the presidency. But Bill Gates is moving ahead with enthusiasm. He tells Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic's editor in chief, why he's still optimistic, and how he feels about no longer being the richest man in the world.

Here’s a case where this podcast runs a bit off the rails in interviewing someone perhaps too “popular”. It’s a good interview and certainly a “get”, but I’m not sure I learned too much interesting here that I haven’t seen or heard elsewhere. Much of the strength of what I’ve heard thus far stems from interviews with people that are slightly off the beaten path, but with serious messages and interesting viewpoints. The other strength is that the show can give them additional time and depth than they might receive on other shows. I’m not saying that Bill Gates doesn’t have anything interesting or important to say, just that he isn’t revealing anything particularly new here that I haven’t seen elsewhere.

Bill Gates shares his list of best books he read in 2016. The list includes “String Theory” by David Foster Wallace, “Shoe Dog” by Phil Knight, “The Gene” by Siddhartha Mukherjee, “The Myth of the Strong Leader” by Archie Brown, and “The Grid” by Gretchen Bakke.

“The Gene” by Siddhartha Mukherjee, “The Myth of the Strong Leader” by Archie Brown, and “The Grid” by Gretchen Bakke all sound the most interesting.

I’ve heard there was a lot of dubious science discussed in Mukherjee’s book when it came out, but Gates doesn’t mention any of the controversy in his review. The last two books I listed above are lesser known, and I hadn’t heard about them previously. I’ll have to take a look at them over the coming holidays.

The best part of teaching Big History is that we’re always learning right alongside our students. As the year winds down here in the US, many BHP teachers are looking for books to take with them to the beach, the mountains, or wherever they choose to unwind this summer.
We asked our teacher leaders for their favorite books related to Big History and this list is what they came up with.